Some embodiments described herein relate generally to methods and apparatus for analyzing social media for enterprise compliance issues. Such embodiments can include, for example, a web-based compliant context machine learning driven social media monitoring system.
The term “social media” refers to online social networks that connect people who share interests and/or activities. Some known social media services are web-based and provide a variety of ways for users to interact such as, for example, via feeds, posts, electronic mail (email), file sharing, social listening, instant messaging services, and/or the like. Examples of some social media platforms include, but are not limited to, Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, and so forth.
In recent years, communication via social media platforms has rapidly increased. Social media communication is large, uncontrolled, and growing. Ineffective monitoring or lack of monitoring of communication between employees of an enterprise (such as hospitals and pharmaceutical companies), and other (potentially competing) enterprises via various social media based platforms can lead to undesirable consequences. One such undesirable consequence can be unwanted, unnecessary and potentially damaging leaks of confidential information such as patient medical records, prescription drug synthesis procedures, and/or the like.
Furthermore, the requirements of the Securities and Exchange Commission, National Association of Securities Dealers, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, the Food and Drug Administration regulations regarding off-label promotion of drugs as well as reporting requirements of adverse events in medications in addition to various anti-harassment and anti-discrimination laws are among the over 10,000 legal and regulatory requirements that may give rise to a need on the part of an enterprise to be able to monitor, record, archive, index, retrieve, analyze, report and/or control employee (or other user) communications in various social media platforms.
Accordingly, a need exists for methods and apparatus that can allow enterprises to develop effective compliance mechanisms to monitor communication between employees (e.g., doctors, nurses, and support staff), patients and other companies (e.g., drug companies, medical device companies) via various social media based platforms.